


Don't Sit Under the Apple Tree

by novaband



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Canon Divergence - Captain America: The Winter Soldier, F/M, they get their dance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-15
Updated: 2017-07-15
Packaged: 2018-12-02 09:36:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 809
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11506665
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/novaband/pseuds/novaband
Summary: Steven Grant Rogers has always been anything but punctual. Arriving seventy years late, however, was a new feat.





	Don't Sit Under the Apple Tree

**Author's Note:**

> There's always such sorrow when it comes to Peggy Carter. I wanted to change that.
> 
> (Title and ending passage based on Glenn Miller and the Andrew Sisters's rendition of the 1908 song, Don't Sit Under the Apple Tree.)

Steve Rogers was never someone that you could rely on for being at an event on time. He was always a few minutes late, occasionally having to explain to Bucky (or, every so often, to Bucky _and_ the dames he happened to snag) why he was boasting a busted lip and a shiner. He had rarely been over ten minutes late to anything, however.

So, yeah, _seventy years_ was definitely a new one.

The sickly sweet scent of the red roses in his hands hardly eased his nerves. Palms slick, he forced himself to wonder if she would recognize him, if she would even want him there. Doubt creeped in, its serpentine vines wrapping around his mind. He could still turn back.

The click of the lock on the door in front of him brought him back to reality, a young nurse coming through. She eyed the super soldier with curiosity and near annoyance, opening her mouth to most likely scold him about eight o'clock in the evening hardly being within nursing home visiting hours. Yet, when the nurse's eyes landed on the roses, she hardly made a comment at all, slipping out into the hallway and leaving the door open. 

"Jen, is that you? I thought your shift was over, dear — "

" . . . You did tell me eight o'clock for dancing, Pegs. I never planned on being seventy years off, but I did make it for eight o'clock."

The golden-brown eyes of Margaret Carter snapped open at the sound of a male voice, eyes widening in disbelief. There, standing at the foot of her bed, was Steve Rogers, America's Golden Boy, shaking like a leaf with red roses in his hands. A gentle silence settled between them as Peggy calmed her shock, the only sounds being the soft thud of Steve's shoes against the carpeting and the crinkle of the paper sleeve around a dozen flowers. Steve settled himself on the bed, holding the roses out for Peggy to take. She did so, the roses being placed on the bedside table without a sound.

"Steve . . . you're alive." Her voice sounded broken, a bit like a scratched vinyl on a turntable. 

"I'm alive, Peggy. I couldn't leave my best girl, could I? Not when she owes me a dance."

Peggy mustered the strength to sit up in her bed, pulling Steve into the best embrace she could manage at her current age. The atmosphere's tension lifted, a weight falling off of Steve's chest. 

"How about that dance? Y'know, iTunes actually has big band music!" Steve broke the embrace to pull out the small device Tony had given him, stored in the pocket of his trousers until that very moment. 

The moment when he looked at Peggy Carter again, with no dread. No anxiety.

The wrinkles and grey hairs had all but disappeared, leaving him to stare. His mind was playing tricks on him, of course, for he had seen her wrinkled skin, felt it against his smooth hands, but for a moment, he allowed himself to be made into a fool as his thumb ghosted over a play button, as Glenn Miller filled the room. 

It took some strategic thinking, once Steve slipped out of his trance, to get Peggy out of her bed without harming her now fragile bones. They could hardly Lindy Hop across the floor, but Steve led his best girl into a waltz, her feet atop his so as to support her in that instance. Even as the tempo of their dance hardly matched the songs in the background, none of that mattered to the pair. They were transported to an imagined time in which Steve was wearing his uniform with pride, Peggy donning her signature red lipstick, and they had finally found the right partner to share a dance with.

For a moment, Steve allowed himself to imagine a life with the ever beautiful woman in front of him. Children and grandchildren to call his own. Perhaps he would be in the nursing home with Peggy, or the serum would keep him on his two feet well enough to keep himself alive until he passed. 

For a moment, Steve Rogers allowed himself to pretend that everything was okay, and Peggy Carter did, too. They could have sat under the apple blossom-filled tree on V-E day, watching the clouds pass by as the Third Reich collapsed under Allied weight, and sat listening to the radio as V-J day unfurled in the Pacific. Under the same apple tree, weather permitting. They gave themselves permission to imagine a perfect life, a perfect world. It was far sweeter than any honey-crisp that tree produced.

_**Don't sit under the apple tree with anyone else but me, 'til I come marching home. I know the apple tree is reserved for you and me, and I'll be true, 'til you come marching home**._


End file.
